New Year Resolutions

To avoid fighting with Jeanine when it’s not necessary. I am not always right, I don’t have to be always right, and I need to be able to walk away more often. Jeanine is raw and angry, too. Our marriage needs to be a place of safety and comfort rather than another battlefront.

Make a difference in other people’s lives. I have needed so much in the last year. Never before have I leaned on my friends as much and as hard. Relationships need to ebb and flow. It is my turn to flow, to give, to be present.

Spend special time with each of my boys. Take Jake fishing. Take Zachary up to Ogunquit to paint the garage together. Make appointments for Ben and I to go to the spa for a day.

Let go. There are some things in my life I cannot change. If I have to climb onto a high mountain top and chain myself there until I get it, that’s what I’ll do. I will stop trying to make impossible people understand me. I will stop looking for approval from people who will never approve of me.

And I’m going hold tight. My family, my friends, all the love in my life. Enough with the old tapes, over and over, telling me how worthless I am. How selfish I am. Enough looking to the wrong people for love. See above resolution. I’m not giving myself away anymore. I have to stop looking outside for acceptance.

Close wounds. I am going to work as hard as I can to accept what happened to me. Understand the way it makes me move through the world today. And move forward holding all of who I am with pride.

Embrace all the wonderful things my mother left me. A friend told me today, after describing our trip to San Francisco- a gift from me to my whole family- I was just like my mother. My mother would give the most perfect gift at the most perfect time, freely and with great joy. I did, too. I know she taught me how.

Overall, I am going to push myself to be a better person. A better mother. A better friend. A better wife.

Wish me luck.